animist forest circles returns
thoughts on time "off" & disillusionment
i’m traveling
These past few months, I did a thing that capitalism tells us is wildly irresponsible. And self indulgent. And lazy. And even dangerous.
I took three months almost entirely off from paid work.
Without getting fired, or having a baby, or navigating a health crisis. I just took time “off.”
What do we get off of? And then what do we get onto?
As a former school teacher, I have been used to taking almost two complete months off of paid work each summer. Adding one month to this window felt seductively transgressive. As a thirty-something-year-old in the belly of the empire, I am fully expected to engage in paid work every week of every month (give or take 2-3 weeks) until I lose my vitality and ultimately retire to a life of watching younger people live.
Constant scarcity fear tugs at me, at the financial irresponsibility, at the incessant need to accumulate, grow, hoard. Even as everything around us crumbles and displays howling, humbling truth beneath each shiny plastic facade, I battle the limiting beliefs planted within me about the desperate necessity of eternal material accumulation.
The illusions of domination, control, and ease we so effortlessly melted into in the 90’s shatter dramatically as the disillusioning truth-tellers of our 21st century polycrisis shake us to awaken: climate change is here revealing the repercussions of neglecting reciprocity, never-ending genocides revealing the vile sham of capitalist “democracy,” plummeting economies revealing the childish delusion of the freedom of unchecked desires.
And yet, despite my commitment to disillusionment, I struggle to consider a small fraction of my time as belonging to me, to my unpaid work, to my untethered soul.
I have the immense privilege of being able to earn money, save, and budget the way I do. I partake in expense sharing with my partner, I don’t have children, I don’t have much debt. I rarely eat at restaurants and I don’t stay at hotels. I profoundly enjoy traveling the way I do: low budget, high value. I visit friends around the world, I backpack, I visit family, I participate in earth skills gatherings where the accommodation is camping and the food is cooked by me.
And even though I deeply love my paid work, these months of unpaid time have given me the gift of space and time to reflect, to heal, to rest, to indulge in long, long sessions of late-night philosophical meanderings with friends, with journaling, with long walks, with planning for the future of Other Ways of Being (it’s gonna be real good). It has given me the time to be profoundly morose, as well as resoundingly joyful. I have been able to play and dream and wander.
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been in Bavaria at a dear friend, Lilly’s, farm. Yesterday I spent the morning farming with my friend and farm volunteers. I spent the afternoon catching up on life-tasks on the computer, harvesting tomatoes for jam with Lilly. In the evening, after moving between watering the veggies and conversing with different people about the land, I took a shower outdoors and steamed some farm-grown potatoes. As the sun set, I settled around the garden table while Lilly lit some candles, and we talked until the night changed the date on the calendar.
We talked about our ideals of collaboration and what we imagine it takes to really change the world, what it’s like living together, what kinds of powers we possess when we are collaborating together, and what this kind of love feels like.
The crescent moon rose and the candle fire flickered and we just existed in space and time, stoking one another’s awareness of isness and interbeing. Of striving and recognizing and aiming to fulfill our functions like the plants of a syntropic system.
Slightly up the hill, young workaway volunteers slept in caravans while they let their dreams process the experiences of the day: using their bodies, falling in love, contemplating sovereignty and sufficiency and collapse and conflict and the joys of all cooking and eating together when spirits are high. The vibrations of their giggling and chatting and hacky-sack throwing reverberated long past their bedtime.
I can’t know your personal situation, but I do know this: unpaid, unplugged time to self is an act of sabotage against the system when we do it intentionally and wisely. Every moment of needed rest and reflection is a molecule of creativity and capacity stored and conjured for you to give your gifts. This is the true function of time to self; capacity to give to the collective. Not “productivity.” Not endless self-healing. It is capacity to share your true gift, in its fullest form, as of this moment in your development.
We are here to give. That is how we receive.
animist forest circles
& offers for returners
One of the gifts I feel impassioned about offering is Animist Forest Circles (the fall dates & information are not up yet), and I feel blessed beyond my wildest dreams to be able to share this ritual practice with the greater Burlington area. To be able to share a gift like this is to receive this gift with the fullness of my present self.
Around mid-September, I will be offering again the fall series of Animist Forest Circles at Rock Point.
If you have ever been through a cycle of Forest Circles, I offer you 30% off the price tier where you situate yourself.
It is deeply important to me that people feel welcome, encouraged, and excited to return. It is this way that we build strength with the practice and begin refining in a way that creates stable growth instead of sporatic blips. It is also how we build an intact culture, an intact community. Transience and freshness is sacred, but not without the stability and ongoing-story of continuity.
Lastly, tracing & forming relationship with the forest in a way that traces her metamorphosis throughout the seasons is deeply enriching.
If you would like to return to the practice but find some element - price, timing, etc - to be a barrier, please reach out to me.
Offers for newcomers
If someone who has been in the circles before referred you to them, you are welcome to 15% off the price tier where you situate yourself.
As we build our open potluck ritual, and expand the reach of the webs of this community, I deeply cherish the power of mutuality through word of mouth.
I would so, so love to meet you in September.
I would love to smell the subtle changes in the air with you.
While it is too early for me to have dates confirmed, it is not too early to schedule a clarity call. (Website to be updated soon with autumn information; apologies that it is still in spring.
I look forward to being with you again.